Archive for October, 2012

Here I am reading from my novella Sky at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. Terry Shepherd did a fantastic job putting this series together. I love Jason Nahrung’s reading from his novella Salvage, accompanied by Talie Helene on the keyboard.

When we launched Slightsin Fiji, I read my story “The Gibbet Bell”, accompanied by a very talented friend on the violin. It was wonderful! I know there was a recording of it, but cannot find it or remember who had the footage. I really love readings with music, and think there should be more of it. I’m going to push for this at Conflux 9, so any musicians reading this, please let me know!

I do love these New Book posts. Sometimes the life of a writer can feel isolated. Very solitary and internal. So these messages from the outside, these reminders that my stories are making their way in the world, are revitalising.

Plus, they are wonderful books I’m delighted to own and read.

The Invisible Thread (editor is Irma Gold, publisher is Halstead Press) is subtitled “One hundred years of words”. One hundred years of words written in, or inspired by, Canberra, to celebrate this city’s 100th birthday. An excerpt of my story “The Glass Woman” appears in here, alongside stories by Garth Nix, Roger McDonald, Marian Halligan, Judith Wright and many others.

Najlepsze Horrory A.D. 2012 (editor is Barthomiej Paszyek, publisher is Polonsky) is a Polish publication, gathering the Best Horror of the year. The cover is one of the most disturbing I’ve seen; I have to keep it face down to stop freaking out any innocent visitors. In this book are Polish writers Jaroslaw Mozdzioch and Alexsandra Zielinska amongst others. I wish I could read Polish. Will have to get my dad to translate. My story “All You Can Do is Breathe” appears here.

Slices of Flesh (editor is Stan Swanson, publisher is Dark Moon Books) is another book I have to keep facedown. Creepy! Mike Mignola (Hellboy) did the cover. This book is full of tiny nasty tales. I love tiny nasty tales. My story “Blame the Neighbours” appears in this one, which I’m thrilled about, because it’s one of those stories that came to me fully-formed and I like the way it plays out.

This is a first: Harry Markov talks about what sparked the anthology inspired by the Tales to Terrify podcast. I love the podcast, and most recently I’ve enjoyed listening to Angela Slatter’s The Bones Remember Everything and Laird Barron’s Frontier Death Song

Harry says, “The trouble with editing an anthology based on a podcast lies within the fact that the anthology doesn’t seem to have a lot in common with the podcast as a format. I’m speaking from personal experience than an omniscient point of view. My words are never the law on anything, so what I say usually should be taken with a grain of salt, but the podcast has been an exercise in horror exploration. What Larry, Tony and I do with Tales to Terrify is bring forth the best possible horror that we can find.

Pardon me for the TV reference, but Tales to Terrify fits well in the monster-per-week category much like Supernatural’s early seasons. Each week we bring a new story from a new author with a new voice and a new take on horror. Since it’s a week-for-week effort and the accent falls on picking a new scare, new thrill, new chill, the narrative, there’s no overall cohesive substance other than quality. Anthologies tend to need a reason to exist, a cohesive element, which justifies why the stories share the table of contents in the first place.

As such, the general decision behind Tales to Terrify, Volume 1 was to NOT make a Best of collection, even though we had enough material to produce not one, but two anthologies. What we wanted for the anthology was to become a box of chocolates with each wonderful story a different flavor. Horror much like comedy boils down to personal taste and while evil slasher types makes one person’s heart race, it’s a horde of zombies that chills the blood of others. Same goes for pace, for the amount of flash scares and psychological horror.

The concept of the box of chocolates acts as the bonding agent that holds the stories together and all the internal illustrations, which are a direct throw-back to those vintage horror magazines are intentional, because magazines in those times catered to a variety of tastes. Curiously, because we decided against featuring stories that have only aired on the show, Tales to Terrify, Volume 1 bridges nicely between the shows. It showcases the source material for some of the tales on the show and acts as a teaser for what you can experience in later shows.

The editing process after these cardinal decisions has been very organic and the final incarnation of all our efforts speaks for itself.

GAME: You can be one of the lucky 10 people to win a PDF copy of our anthology. All you have to do is find us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TalesToTerrify?ref=hl) or Twitter (@TalestoTerrify) and answer the following question: What scares you most? The most creative responses will receive the coveted PDF copy and will be featured in our second November show.

The game will end on October 31st, the book’s official launch date. A like and a follow will be appreciated, but are not a prerequisite to enter the competition.